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The Notes feature of Microsoft PowerPoint is very handy especially when you want to create handouts for your audience’s reference. You can insert the notes to your slides while working in the normal view of PowerPoint. The Notes pane appears at the bottom of the PowerPoint work area when you are in the Normal view and you can simultaneously insert notes as you create your slides. Another option is to open the Notes page and exclusively work on inserting notes. You can open the Notes page by selecting the Notes Page option from View menu. The following figure shows the Notes pane in Normal view and the Notes Page:

Notes Pane and Notes Page

This figure shows the Notes pane that appears in the Normal view for inserting notes. It also shows the Notes page for inserting notes.

The notes page displays a small slide preview and the notes for that particular slide. Some features of the Notes page view are:

• It includes all notes for each slide in the PowerPoint presentation.
• Each slide consists of a Notes Page.
• Notes are part of the PowerPoint presentation and follow the slides.
• You can use the Notes Page to add pictures and objects to your presentation.

The Notes page view in PowerPoint allows you to add pictures, charts and other objects to your presentation notes. An object such as picture or chart that is added to the Notes Page appears in the printed notes but cannot be a part of the Normal view. Also, if you save your presentation as a Web page, the picture or objects that you add to the Notes Page do not appear when you display your presentation in the Web browser along with your notes. The modifications you make to the notes are applied only to the Notes Page and the Notes Pane in normal view.

You can type and format notes working in the normal view. You can also see how your notes will look when printed in the print preview. You can also check and modify your notes headers and footers in print preview. You can print the notes pages and use them as notes with your presentation for yourself and your audience.

Also, Microsoft PowerPoint provides you with a Notes Master. Any modifications that you want to perform to all the Notes Pages in a presentation can be done to the Notes Master. When you insert an object such as a picture or auto shape to the Notes Master, it is automatically inserted to all Notes Pages for all slides. You can use the Notes Master to change the position of the slide area, position of the notes area, header, footer, and page number etc. of the Notes Page.

TJ